The guerrilla patrol that moved slowly through the
sides of the mountain chain that surrounded several small villages
consisted of 8 combatants. Two months earlier, these same eight
combatants, together with twenty others that hadn’t come along
this time, made the first contact with the inhabitants of a tiny
village called Las Peñas. The guerrillas introduced themselves
as members of the country's Liberation Movement, and explained the
reasons why they had taken up arms and gone to the mountains. The
first reason, they pointed out, was that they saw no other
alternative. All doors had been closed to any kind of participation,
to variation, to difference. The rulers had been ruling for too long
and they planned to continue ruling for even longer. And they were
ready to kill and destroy anything and anybody who stood on their
way. Demands for just salaries were out of the question. This demand
represented investment, it meant giving back a bit of what the power
holders took, usually by unjust and illegal means. They would never
share their power with the people. The people were there to be
exploited, to facilitate the accumulation of massive fortunes. This,
according to the guerrillas, gave them the right to fight to take the
power away by force.

The guerrillas explained that they were not trying to
recruit fighters. The town’s inhabitants didn’t have to
fear that they would be forced to fight. It was the army who
kidnapped men, usually the youngest, to train as soldiers and return
to their villages to kill their own. The guerrillas wanted fighters,
of course, but they wanted fighters that joined voluntarily, not by
force. If in Las Peñas there were men or women who wanted to
join them in their fight for justice, they were welcomed with open
arms. But at the moment what the guerrillas wanted from them was a
commitment to provide supplies, some beans and tortillas, maybe even
some coffee, every now and then. In exchange they would teach the
inhabitants to read, to write and to improve their agricultural
techniques. They also promised extensive education as to why poor
peasants must organize to change their situation.

The peasants’ response couldn’t have been
more positive.

“Yes, we’ll help you. We are poor and
ignorant”, said Jacinto, the elder who acted as leader of the
village, “but not dumb. We are aware that the unjust way in
which we live has been forced on us for different reasons. We want to
help you, and we are ready to accept your guidance and your
teachings.”

The patrol which visited Las Peñas consisted
always of eight members, each one specialized and in charge of
executing a different task: teaching to read, gender specialists,
agricultural specialists, hygiene specialists, etc. etc. The
education of the women started with the second meeting.

In this village, as in many other villages visited
earlier by the revolutionaries, the women demonstrated more aptitude
than the men in learning and implementing their knew knowledge. And
their teachers showed their appreciation by congratulating them often
for their good results, which increased the pupils’ enthusiasm
and served as incentive to continue their development. Also, as in
many other villages visited earlier, the men started to demonstrate
resentment towards their women as well as towards the guerrillas.
They resented their women for changing, for improving themselves, for
showing independence, for expressing themselves as to their likes and
dislikes, for refusing to do what they considered unfair and
insisting on doing what they considered fair. And they resented the
guerrillas for causing the change and because the women used them as
mediators and as their judges and protectors. “I’ll tell
the ‘compañeros’ that you don’t take into
account my viewpoint”, or “We’ll tell the
‘compañeros’ that you ignore our complaints”
were sentences that the men of Las Peñas heard everyday. They
were also sentences of which, slowly but surely, the men of Las Peñas
became tired of.

One day the usual patrol of teachers arrived in the
village, as previously agreed upon. However, only the old leader and
a man of around 40, both chosen by the village’s men to be
their negotiators, were at the meeting place. The old man started
explaining the reasons the villagers were absent:

“The men are angry. Our women are not the same
since you arrived, they have taken seriously this issue of organizing
and demanding their rights. They really believe that they are equal
to us and want us to treat them different. The men can’t even
drink chicha any more, the women complain that it makes us drunk and
throw it away. They want us to work harder at home, to help with the
children in exchange for their help in the fields. And they spend too
much time trying to learn to read and write. The few than can read,
read to the others from those papers and books that you left us the
first time you came down from the mountains. It’s a real
nightmare, we can’t control our women any more. If this state
of things continues we are not going to help you any more with your
task of ‘changing the country.’ What are you doing,
really? We accepted to help you because we want a better life, enough
money to eat, to dress, and to send our children to school. We want
all those things, yes, but we don’t want you to change our
women. We want them back the way they were!”

The guerrilla patrol’s commander tried to
explain,

-“Compañero, the changes our country
needs are all-encompassing. To be able to effect them it’s
necessary to change also our attitudes, as a matter of fact, it is
with our attitudes that we must start, and the best place to start is
our own homes, with our own families…”

-“No, no, no! Don’t you understand what
Jacinto said, compañero?” Interrupted the younger
peasant, “If our women don’t go back to being what they
were, we won’t continue helping you. We know that your work is
important, we know that it will bring some benefit some day. Maybe
when we begin to see the benefits we’ll allow you to change our
women. Right now, no, because we are only seeing disadvantages. We,
the men from Las Peñas, are loosing, and we don’t want
to loose anymore. We want to be the bosses in our homes again. We
don’t want to come tired from working in the fields to be told
by our women that dinner is not ready because they had been learning
to read and write or because one of them had been reading to the
others from the books you left us. Imagine, compañero, things
could not be worse. When we protest, they ask us to cook! It’s
not a lie, it has happened to me and to my brother Honorio!”

-“The compañero speaks the truth”,
added Jacinto, “Even my wife has been infected by this fever of
self-improvement. She used to help me in the fields, but now she says
that the purpose of her whole life has been to do what I want, and
that now that she’s old she wants to do something she wants. At
her age, she wants to learn to read and write! Isn’t the old
witch crazy?!”

-“Compañeros, in all civilized countries
with just governments and decent living standards, women have the
same rights as men. The men respect their women and allow them
freedoms. And the women do not become despots, their goal in life is
not to control their men. On the contrary, satisfied women cooperate
willingly with their men, and their relationships, at all levels,
become harmonious. Men and women become a team, not enemies."

-“I’m sure you’re right, but, as
you said, that happens in civilized countries. We are still not
developed and getting at the stage you’re talking about will
take us at least a few hundred years. I hope our descendants can
enjoy what you’re talking about. For us, however, it sounds
just like something out of one of those books you left us to learn
from.”

-“You must make it happen! It is not going to
happen if you continue with your negative attitude.”

The younger peasant looked at the older one and
asked,

-“Do you want to tell them, Jacinto, or should
I?”

-“I’ll do it. Compañeros, you are
going to need our support more than ever. The army was here all day
yesterday and asked us a lot of questions. They know that you have a
camp near Las Peñas and they plan to go up the mountains to
find you. We have never liked the army, and your teachings have
strengthened our dislike and mistrust for them. You can trust us,
compañeros, we would never inform the army that you visit us
often, it would be like issuing our own death sentence. But, if you
don’t stop inciting our women to change, we're not going to
supply you with more beans, or tortillas, or coffee. We won’t
even want you to visit us any more, unless you agree to stop teaching
our women all that nonsense.”

-“O.K.”, said the group commander, “I
cannot give you an answer now, I must consult with my superiors in
the mountains. But, whatever my superiors decide, it's just fair that
the women be informed as well, in particular if the decision involves
stopping their education. We don’t want them to think that we
have abandoned them by choice, you must take responsibility, you must
face them together with us and explain to them what you have done and
why. We’ll be back in two days with a reply. We’ll meet
here, at this same place, at the same time, and we expect to see the
women here too.”

Up in the mountains, Comandante David was not
surprised to hear the news.

-“I knew it,” he told his comrades, “So
far there has not been a village where the men have accepted that the
women take a step forward. However, I was hopping for a miracle at
Las Peñas, because it was the women who organized and
protested last year, when the local landowners refused to pay the
salaries of their employees claiming bad crops. I figured that their
men allowed them a certain degree of freedom, because it’s
difficult to carry out this kind of action without the support of
one’s family. I guess I figured wrong.”

-“What are we going to do, comandante?”
asked Virginia, one of the members of the patrol that was in charge
of educating the people of Las Peñas, “The women are so
happy to learn everything that we’re teaching them. They show
progress beyond our expectations. I absolutely refuse to stop helping
them only because their men happen to be selfish primitives!”

-“Compañera, please, you have to
understand that there are reasons why these men act as they do. We
have to understand too that what they gave us is an ultimatum. We
need the support of the people of Las Peñas and that support
is in the hands of the men.

-“Yes, comandante, I understand that there are
reasons for the behavior of those men. Historical reasons, cultural
reasons all kinds of reasons. There are also reasons why the army
rules our country and why the rich exploit the poor. And if I
understood it correctly, we are here because we don’t accept
those reasons. Why then do we have to accept the reasons the men of
Las Peñas give us to keep their women oppressed?”

-“Compañera Virginia, believe me, I
understand your frustration. But the road to victory is long, and
full of hardship and injustice. We have to evaluate our options. If
we insist on educating the women, we loose the support of the men.
And because ultimately they are still the ones in charge, we will
loose the support of the whole village. On the other hand, if we do
as the men want we will win the support of a strategic zone. We
definitely need the support of Las Peñas now that the army is
so close!

-“What are we going to do then, comandante?”
Asked combatant Gerardo,

-“We have to sacrifice the women!”

-“What do you mean?”

-“We must accept what the men of Las Peñas
want. We must stop educating their women.”

The meeting with the people of Las Peñas took
place as scheduled. Some of the women broke down and cried when they
heard that the guerrillas accepted the ultimatum of their men. Others
left the meeting quietly or cursing at their men and at the
guerrillas. Still a few, frustrated and angry, slapped their men’s
faces. A group of young women, some of them accompanied by their
mothers, conferred quietly. Then they walked towards one of the
corners of the small square where the meeting was taking place,
outside the circle of people that surrounded the visitors and the
representatives of the men of the village, who negotiated their right
to education and improvement. The women stood there the three hours
that the meeting lasted, and, to the surprised of the villagers, when
the guerrilla patrol formed in single file to march towards the
mountains, the women joined, positioning themselves at the end of the
line.

The husbands, the sons, the fathers and brothers of
the women panicked. They pleaded and argued to persuade them to stop
with their craziness. But the young women said that they didn’t
want to stay and marry men that didn’t regard them as their
equals. The older women declared that they had complied with their
duty, that they had been good wives and mothers, that their children
were already grown and didn’t need them any more. It was time
for them to do something for themselves, they said, and going to the
mountains to fight with the guerrillas was what they wanted to do.

The men asked the guerrillas to stop their women from
going with them but they refused.

-“Everyone has the right to contribute to the
revolution in any way they want and can”, had been combatant
Virginia's answer.

One of the young new recruits stopped and yelled a
question to the men:

-“Are you going to allow us to continue
learning from the guerrillas?”

-“Nooo!” the men replied, in unison. The
young woman turned and joined again the group that walked towards the
mountains.

-Damn revolutionaries! Yelled old Jacinto. They are
taking my wife, and my daughters, and my sisters, and they know damn
well that we cannot retaliate. On the contrary, they know that our
cooperation with them is now ensured, because there is no way we are
going to sacrifice our women! Damn women!